"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Do Democratic Congressional Candidates Pass The Smell Test?

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Who would you vote for to be a senator, Ed Snowden or the execrable Patrick Murphy?

The good thing about a narrow win for Clinton-- which is currently being forecast-- is that Trump won't be in a position to destroy the United States. The bad news is that the incredible weak menagerie of candidates recruited by the DSCC and DCCC-- all premised on an anti-Trump tsunami and strong Clinton coattails-- are all going to lose. The Democrats might not even be able to take back the Senate, something that was in the bag before Schumer started recruiting his shitty candidates and undermining the grassroots in state after state. According to the Reuters/Ipsos electoral analysis linked above, Clinton is going to, for example, lose Florida. The gigantically expensive, 7 figure effort by the DSCC and Wall Street to make sure progressive Alan Grayson wouldn't be in position to face Marco Rubio, has left the Democrats with an impossibly incapable nominee, Patrick Murphy-- a spoiled, drunken rich kid who voted with the GOP to start up the Benghazi witch hunt against Clinton and who voted with the GOP to unconstitutionally remove President Obama from the Keystone XL Pipeline decision-making process. This guy defines "loser."Friday, Ben Kamisar reported for The Hill that the DSCC "is canceling advertising in Florida and Ohio to invest more heavily in Missouri and North Carolina." That may be smart strategy, given how fatally flawed the Democratic candidates are in Florida and Ohio. But the tragedy is that those two weak candidates were forced on Democratic primary voters by Schumer and his DSCC sock puppet Jon Tester. They decided to push corporate shills in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Arizona, none of whom are looking like winners. And it's left the DSCC floundering hopelessly in a year where they should be riding high and banking extra seats to make up for the expected big losses in 2018.

The financial rejiggering by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spells the latest disappointment for Ohio Democratic Senate hopeful Ted Strickland, who is being abandoned by the party as he plummets in the polls. It's also ominous for Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, who's fighting incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida.By shifting cash, the Democrats are revealing two elements of their strategy that would have surprised anyone 18 months ago: They believe they can win in Missouri and North Carolina.A DSCC official confirmed the cancelation of Florida and Ohio buys for the period between Oct. 4 and 10. The source said the DSCC has put an additional $2 million into Missouri and $4.2 million into North Carolina, as well as $2.5 million into Indiana, where former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh is looking to win back his seat....The investments reveal a shifting map for Democrats, as a handful of states did not cooperate with conventional wisdom.Ohio looks out of reach for Democrats, as Portman now holds a 13 point lead in RealClearPolitics' recent polling average. The Florida race is closer, but Democratic plans to take the seat have been frustrated by Rubio's surprise decision to run for reelection.

The Hill would never publish a story that pointed out that the Democrats' weak loser candidates were forced on the party by Schumer or that the Democratic establishment in DC has consistently recruited horrible candidates who are the mirror images of the conservatives who run the DSCC and DCCC. And who consistently lose.Although the DCCC won't put actual money into most of them, this cycle they have 38 candidates on their Red to Blue list. Most of them are untethered from their district's grassroots. Many are outright conservatives-- Republican-lite candidates who can only be elected on presidential coattails and then almost automatically lose in subsequent midterms. Some of self-funders. Many of them are Blue Dogs and/or New Dems who, if they're elected, support Paul Ryan's agenda, not a progressive agenda. They look and smell just like the DCCC chumps who recruited them, New Dem Denny Heck and Blue Dogs Steve Israel and Cheri Bustos; or, worse yet, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a shameless crook, stinking of corruption to high heaven-- but nothing like the emerging Democratic electorate. Of the 38 candidates on their list, there is genuine grassroots enthusiasm for fewer than a dozen (Zephyr Teachout, who had to be forced on the DCCC by angry donors, Ruben Kihuen, Carol Shea Porter, Denise Juneau, Angie Craig, Kim Mower, Morgan Carroll, Doug Applegate, maybe Salud Carbajal). God knows how many of them aren't even Democrats but these 6 recently and opportunistically joined the party: Tom O'Halleran, Charlie Crist, Randall Perkins, Monica Vernon, Anna Throne-Holst and Mike Derrick. So far Pelosi's House Majority PAC has spent six-figure amounts on only 4 non-incumbents:

Maybe Pelosi thought Throne-Holst, rumored to be having an affair with Steve Israel, is a New Dem because she is, literally a new Democrat, having switched parties days before the deadline for the election! And meanwhile, worthy candidates in winnable districts are being sabotaged by the DCCC which just does not want to see progressives strong within the House Democratic Conference-- like these men and women who won their primaries and aren't being backed by the DCCC: